Giveaway: Back to school with Tights Please

Early morning is a very special time of day. Getting just that little bit of me time before the rest of the house is awake sets me up nicely for the rest of the day and reminds me, fleetingly, that adult life continues outside of toddlerworld. Having this head space to think often leads my mind down strange and interesting pathways and so it was that this morning, as I was waiting for the coffee to brew, filling DD’s syringe with iron (no we don’t inject her, but it’s the only way to get the blessed stuff out of the glass vials) and desperately trying not to look at our blocked sink (blocked despite OH going at it with a plunger and me pouring a bottle of danger-corrosive-orange-gloop down it), it struck me that in two years time I will probably be sitting in the same spot sewing name tags on every item of DD’s clothing in preparation for her first day at school.

After I’d wiped the cold sweat from my brow, soothed myself that this milestone is really quite a long way off and so I don’t need to start panicking about it just yet (although I did have to resist the urge to set a task reminder for 24 months ahead), I started thinking about back to school time. The brand new pencil case and sharpened pencils, shiny black patent shoes polished to within an inch of their lives with Vaseline (just my family then?), lunch box jammed full of healthy grub that will be swapped for crisps and chocolate in the school canteen…. and the tights.

Bit of a sore point here. When I was a girl *thinks back wistfully before realising just how long ago that really was* it seems we had to wear navy blue tights regardless of the weather. Warm day in September? Tough luck. Get your tights on. As I moved up through the school I swapped navy woolly tights for natural 15-denier grown-up ones and spent most of my break times repairing the holes in them with nail varnish. Will this cycle repeat itself for DD? I wonder…

Well best to be prepared I suppose, so it’s helpful that Tights Please sent DD a pair of lovely creamy yellow Sarah Borghi tights and asked us to review their site. (P.S. There’s a giveaway coming up so keep reading!)

Tights Please was born in 2000 out of the frustration at the inconvenience of going to the shops to buy tights, stockings, hold ups and socks. ‘What is the point in going to buy a pair of tights for a few pounds and paying at least as much again in petrol and parking?’ they thought, ‘only to then find the shop didn’t stock what you wanted in the first place!’ Quite so. Since then tightsplease has grown to be one of the largest online hosiery retailers in the world and at any one time they stock over 15,000 pairs of the tights, stockings, hold ups, socks, lingerie and shapewear. (Phew, wouldn’t want to do a stock-check at their place.) Here’s what we thought of their shopping experience:

Delivery - Quick and easy and packages come in small, convenient sizes to fit straight through your letter box. If you order before 4pm they’ll despatch the same day if what you want is in stock. DD’s tights arrived wrapped in tissue paper with a sprinkling of fabric rose petals inside. So pretty and an attention to detail some bigger names could take note of.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net